Over the next three centuries this agricultural exploitation
resulted in the loss of farmland and declining fortunes for
Egypt. Only aft er the Romans left did Egypt’s farmers reor-
ganize their properties.
Roman provinces had their own agricultural specialties
that they exported to the capital. Crete was the best source
for herbal medicines. Spain and Gaul made the best garum,
a sauce that was made by fermenting fi sh in salt and that was
used to fl avor most Roman dishes. Romans also exported
their own plants to other countries. Roman soldiers and colo-
nists missed their wine, lentils, and olives, and so they at-
tempted to plant their own favorite foods wherever they went.
Grapes did so well in Gaul (France), Germany, and Spain that
wines from those regions began to be popular with Romans
during the imperial period. Even distant Britain, which the
Romans occupied from 43 to 410 c.e., acquired Roman crops;
celery, cilantro, fennel, carrots, pears, peaches, mulberries,
and many other plants that now grow there were brought by
the ancient Romans.
THE AMERICAS
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Historians do not know much about early agriculture in the
Americas. Th e earliest farmers did not leave written records
of their farming practices. To discover what crops were
grown and when, scholars have to look for evidence of crops
at archaeological sites, digging for fossilized seeds and at-
tempting to date them through various scientifi c processes.
Th ere is currently a fair amount of disagreement among
historians of agriculture as to when early Americans began
farming, what they grew, and how crops spread through the
Americas. Some scholars believe that the fi rst American
farmers grew corn in the highlands of Mexico around 4000
b.c.e. Others insist that agriculture began much earlier, per-
haps as early as 8000 b.c.e., in the lowland forests of Central
America and northern South America. At present there is
not enough evidence available to answer any of these ques-
tions conclusively.
Despite the scholarly disputes, it is known that Americans
did grow crops in ancient times and that they were certainly
farming by 4000 b.c.e. Agricu lture seems to have arisen inde-
pendently in four separate areas: the Andes, Middle America
from northern Panama to central Mexico, the Southwest of
the United States, and the Eastern Woodlands of the United
States In the Andes, from central Ecuador south to Chile,
people began farming between 3500 and 2000 b.c.e. People
in Mexico are believed to have started farming corn about
4000 b.c.e. and soon added beans and squash to their crops.
Th e cultivation of corn traveled north to the Southwest of the
present-day United States by 2000 b.c.e. Farmers in the East-
ern Woodlands started cultivating a few local crops around
2000 b.c.e. but did not engage in large-scale agriculture until
corn appeared there in the fi rst century c.e.
Th e Americas, like Africa, were a less-than-ideal envi-
ronment for the development and spread of agriculture. Un-
like the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the Americas do not
have many native wild grains suitable for domestication. Teo-
sinte, the probable ancestor of corn, was not nearly as easy to
domesticate as wheat in the Middle East or rice in Asia. Th e
Americas also lie along a north-south axis, as opposed to an
east-west axis like Eurasia. Plants tend to be adapted for par-
ticular latitudes; they can move from east to west fairly eas-
ily because climate and day length remain the same, but they
cannot move as easily from north to south because climate
and day length change too much. In addition, the mountain
ranges that run north to south in the Americas separated the
east coasts from the west, preventing easy east-west transmis-
sion of crops. As a result, agriculture in the Americas was slow
to develop and travel through the continents, and American
civilizations never reached the level of development achieved
by those in Eurasia.THE TRINITY: CORN, BEANS, AND SQUASH
Humans developed agriculture in the Americas long before
Europeans arrived and long before the famous three New
World civilizations of Maya, Aztec, and Inca arose. Th e staple
crops of these societies were corn, beans, and squash. Th ese
three crops were so ubiquitous and so oft en found together
that historians have christened them the “trinity.” Combin-
ing the three ingredients made for a balanced diet; the corn
supplied energy, the beans provided protein, and the squash
furnished other nutrients.
Th e trinity is very old. Historians have found numer-
ous caves in Mexico that were inhabited by about 4000 b.c.e.
Within these caves are traces of corn, beans, and squash. Th e
residents of these caves lived primarily as hunter-gatherers;
in the caves, archaeologists have found many bones of wild
anima ls, such as deer and rabbit, as well as traces of pine nuts,
hackberries, and other wild plants. Wild ancestors of squash,
beans, and corn grew in the area, and the cave dwellers cer-
tainly gathered and ate them, but scientists have analyzed
the remains in the caves and determined that some of the
corn, beans, and squash were defi nitely domesticated. Corn,
or maize, was the foundation of the trinity. It provided the
bulk of calories in the form of carbohydrates. Transforming
corn from its wild ancestor into the cultivated version took a
long time; it was much more diffi cult than the process of do-
mesticating wheat in Mesopotamia, mainly because the wild
ancestor of corn is so drastically diff erent from the domesti-
cated version.
Modern corn is probably descended from a plant called
teosinte. No one knows exactly how this transformation oc-
curred. Teosinte, in fact, looks almost nothing like corn.
Corn grows as a single stalk with many ears on it; each ear
has multiple rows of seeds. Teosinte, in contrast, is a grass
with many stalks, each of which contains several spikes with
single rows of seeds. Hunter-gatherers could have used theseagriculture: The Americas 45